Some days be like..

DreamLog

There's a large black suitcase in the living room. A man in a dark suit stands patiently beside it. He watches me sadly from behind his spectacles as I walk to the bedroom.

"Who is that man in the lounge?" I ask as I ready myself for bed.

"Don't." he says simply. "Don't go out there. It is coming to collect him."

The suitcase is there again the following night. And the night after that, and again for many nights. Sometimes It remains in the lounge. Sometimes It stands solidly in front of the kitchen door, as if to block any attempts of escape. It emits a hollow darkness which echoes in my belly and I know to be Fear.

I do not see the man again.

The days are bright, the sun washes the Fear away and I am happy. I dance around in my wee house, doing my happy homely things, until the day fades and the duvet beckons. I climb, pyjama clad, into my safe bed, with my safe book.

The music is still playing. I've forgotten to turn the music off. It's loud. Too loud. I have to go back out..

But I am afraid.

"Baby. Can you turn the music off please? It's just that.."

"Of course. Just stay here." It is nothing to him.

I fall asleep. A heavy, dreamless sleep.

...............................................................

When I awaken, it is black. A darkness so thick it is hard to move. His side of the bed is empty. Cold. "Dave?"

The realisation jolts me awake and I half-scramble, half-fall out of the bed. "DAVE!" My scream comes out strangled, muted, gasping. My head is yanked towards the ground as my hands fly to my neck. Wrapped around my throat is the long handle of a sack full of rocks. It tightens like a noose as I struggle in panic. The blackness enveloping me is not the dark. It is Fear.

Struggling out of the bedroom into the lounge. Panic. I cannot see. "DAVE!" I gasp. It takes all I have to get out his name. "DAVE!!" The rocks are heavy and the noose only tightens around my neck. On my hands and knees, pulling the rocks behind me. I make it to the kitchen..

The suitcase is there.

It is the source of all the darkness and It sends a Fear that fills my mouth and nostrils, fills my eyes, weighs down my hair, like some cold thick crude oil that can never be washed away. I am frozen, struck voiceless, immobile and choking. It is so very cold.

For an eternity I cannot look away.

Then it disappears.

I spring, all weight lifted from me. I spring, driven, into the bathroom. Across cold linoleum. Driven forward by unknown momentum and the knowledge that I must. I must go. I trip.

I trip. I cannot look down, but I know what has caught my flying feet. It is cold. It used to be human. It is dead on the floor.

But I cannot stop. I must not stop. I must go.

A New Door appears before me and cannot remain closed before my momentum. A New Door that bursts open under my weight and reveals something Glorious. The Fear is driven back by Golden Light. Light that explodes into my senses. And there you are, sitting on the bed, smiling. The Light is coming from you.

Coffee. Balzac. Fueling the Beast. All the things.

I've been so tied up with Uni these days that any writing outside of an assignment context seems repellent.  So I am going to blatantly steal someone else's piece of writing, a short passage that caught my attention at the end of last year and gives me much entertainment whenever I read it.  Also, seeing as I am neck-deep in assignments right now, it seemed fitting to share this passage about something very near and dear to my heart (and stomach..)


The passage describes the addiction to coffee of French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac - 

'Balzac fueled his prolific writing by drinking something like 50 cups of coffee a day - until that failed to be enough for him, and he began eating dry coffee grounds straight, a tactic that he describes as "a horrible, rather brutal method that I recommend only to men of excessive vigor, men with thick black hair and skin covered in liver spots, men with big square hands and legs shaped like bowling pins." The coffee, he writes, "brutalises these beautiful stomach linings as a wagon master abuses ponies; the plexus becomes inflammed; sparks shoot all the way up to the brain.  From that moment on, everything becomes agitated.  Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages.  Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink - for the nightly labour begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder." '

[To give full credit where credit is due, this passage was written by Emily Temple and can be found here.]

where is the humanity?

I feel, especially in these last days leading up to our elections, that it is vital that New Zealanders see this.  Actually, stuff the elections, this is something that every person in Aotearoa needs to watch and think about because this is about us as a community, this is about us taking responsibility as human beings.  This is about us putting people before corporations and profits.


After my initial surge of rage, disgust, and extreme sadness at watching this clip, my main three questions are these:


Firstly, what on EARTH are they teaching at the police colleges that produce policepeople that are so eager to inflict serious harm on other humans?  When I was at primary school, even at high school, to want to become a policeperson came out of a desire to help, protect and generally do good in a community.  Not sit on a desperate and upset man and calmly beat him around the head and ribs with a police-issue baton in front of his extremely pregnant partner SO THAT A LUCRATIVE POWER COMPANY WHO TURNS OVER MILLIONS EACH YEAR CAN SAVE A FEW BUCKS!!  (which turned out to be a mistake on the power company's part anyway!)


Secondly, what lack of humanity allows contractors to carry on their job when they can see the result it is having?  What is this crazy hold over people that lets them use the excuse 'I was just doing my job' when they can see that doing their job is causing a man to receive head injuries?  When it is causing immense distress to a woman who is overdue to give birth?


And, in conclusion to the first two questions I guess, as it was so VERY obvious that things weren't going so well in this situation (to put it lightly) why on earth could the police and contractors not take the sensible approach, pull back, and reassess the situation??  I cannot think of any reason why the disconnection of power had to happen at that specific time, given the resulting circumstances.  Not exactly a life-or-death situation for the power company was it?  Are we really the type of society who would rather see another human beaten till they bleed rather than have a company lose out on a few profits??  Do we truly worship money that much?  Should we really let it control us in that way?


To those of you who say, regarding the police, that they were only doing their jobs, then I say - well, if that is their job, then I think it's time we thought about what sort of system we're living under.  Because I don't want any part of it.

Late-night musings

I was reading back from some journal entries I wrote a few years ago, trying to make sense - once again - of the chaos that is my life.  I came across some notes I'd taken when the idea of a "common bravery" was really starting to invade my consciousness.  It all came back to the fact that I needed to find a better way to deal with the grind of daily life, of everything that surrounded me regardless on a daily basis.  It was a reminder that the inspiration for this is all around me, that I just need to find something that inspires me and hold onto that thing tight inside of me and use it to create a simple courage.  A common bravery.  

The best thing about bravery is that it's contagious.  Once, many years ago, I conducted an interview as part of an oral history paper I was studying at Otago University.  The woman I was interviewing, whom I had never met before, was in her eighties.  She had come to Port Chalmers as a young woman, and was still living when I interviewed her.  She told me things about her life I could never have imagined - such as the excitement of having the first washing machine on her street which all the women would share - and I doubt it was automated.  Of the strength she mustered when she was moved away from her family and anyone else she knew to the, at that time, rather isolated Port Chalmers to be husband-pleaser, baby-maker, mother and housekeeper.  Of being pulled suddenly into the workforce during the War as the menfolk left their jobs, but the factories had to keep running.  And the joy and camaraderie of that work.  And then, just as suddenly, of being relegated back to the house, in isolation, labelled as 'useless', as the men returned home again.  That this tiny woman, feeding me up with scones and showing off the family photos, was telling me about this incredible life without batting an eyelid was amazing, and I felt so privileged to hear her story.

And then.. she asked if we could turn off the dictaphone, and go off the record.  And she proceeded, to a complete stranger a quarter of her age, to break down, to rant, to rage, about all the things she had never been allowed to say as a woman, as a wife, as a mother, as a grandmother..  This tiny woman, whom had had to hold in so much for so long, suddenly found a common bravery with a stranger and released all the feelings and stories she had held inside her for so long.. I feel like I should insert something meaningful here that ties together the story, but no words can express hearing someone release intense emotions they have been holding inside for decades.

I never completed the course.  But the University has the recording, and I hope one day someone does honour to her story.  And I am proud to be the recipient, and perhaps the releaser, of the parts that aren't on the tape.

A Definition..

Common: 1. Mutual; shared by more than one.
               2. Occurring or happening regularly or frequently; usual.
               3. Found in large numbers, or in a large quantity.
               4. Simple, ordinary or vulgar.


Bravery:  noun. Strength in the face of fear.




For me, this is a concept of a daily courage to stare life down.  To stare down the daily grind, and find inspiration from the seemingly ordinary just to spite it. 


And to recognise that courage is contagious, that is expands exponentially, that we should be sharing it around and doing something amazing with it!  Otherwise, what's it all for? 

How the IMF's involvement in Jamaica stunted Jamaica's development

In the early 1970s, the socialist-leaning government led by Michael Manley promised reforms that would end the historical inequalities left behind from Jamaica's days as a colony of the United Kingdom. However covering the costs of these reforms, and dealing with issues such as massive increases in international oil prices, quickly saw Jamaica in financial trouble and in need of assistance. Unable to meet the day-to-day costs of running the country, let alone debt repayments, they had no option but to turn to the International Monetary Fund. Although not responsible for the initial causes, the conditionalities that accompanied IMF assistance were responsible for the continuation and entrenchment of Jamaica's weak development performance since the 1970s.

In the early 1970s, a decade after its independence from the United Kingdom, Jamaica was a small post-colonial nation largely dependent on its agricultural and mineral sectors, and an emerging tourism industry. Although state-promoted industrialisation, economic diversification and foreign investment had seen Jamaica's economy grow since independence, historical social inequalities still existed. The socialist-leaning Manley-led government that came to power in 1972 promised a path of social reform that would address these inequalities and lead to a better way of life for working-class Jamaicans. However, increased welfare services saw a massive increase in state expenditure that had to be covered. The spike in OPEC oil prices of the mid-1970s also pushed up the price of oil and food imports on which Jamaica relied heavily. Fortunately the global financial institutions were flush oil with revenue, and large loans were easy to get. By the late 1970s the price of oil had fully impacted on industrialised nations, pushing interest rates up and causing a slump in the demand for raw materials such as the bauxite that was a main pillar of the Jamaican export industry. Jamaica was now burdened with high-interest loans and contracting revenue with which to meet repayments.³

In an effort to deal with its ailing economy and debt the government took measures to curb imports and raise foreign currency. High tariffs and restrictions on luxury and 'non-basic' goods were imposed. Production levies were introduced into the mineral sector, especially on the multinational mining companies. This new assertiveness from the State scared foreign investors into disinvestment and capital flight from local investors.⁴

The Jamaican government was in deep trouble financially and facing social unrest. By the end of the 1970s it had no choice but to turn to the IMF for help.⁵ By the time the IMF began its association with Jamaica, the country was already deep in debt, had scared off foreign investment and was suffering from a currency crisis, and was politically committed to social welfare reforms it could not pay for. Jamaica had dug itself a massive hole in terms of development progress and performance. However far from assisting Jamaica to recover from this situation, the IMF – in exchange for much-needed funds to tide the government over – would impose programmes of conditionality that would only work to entrench, and in some cases exacerbate, Jamaica's fragile situation.

In July 1944, representatives from 45 countries met in the town of Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in the United States. They believed a framework for international economic cooperation would need to be established at the end of the war to avoid a repeat of such conditions at the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is from this meeting that the Bretton-Woods Institutions, which include the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, were formed.⁶ The initial concept behind the IMF was the Keynesian assumption that market failure will occur at some point in some countries, and when it did the IMF would be able to bolster that country's institutions to provide employment, fund tax cuts and the like until it was able to get back on its feet again. Global collective action around this was seen as important as one country's economic actions spill over into others, and if an ailing country could be temporarily supported, then it would allow the global market to continue to run smoothly – thus avoiding another event like the Great Depression.⁷

However the 1980s saw the rise of a new neo-liberal free market economic paradigm. Championed by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the paradigm soon made its way into the IMF hierarchy and became its new mantra for the developing world.⁸ Stiglitz argues that this new influx of “market fundamentalists” discarded Keynes' belief that public institutions should shield the public from inevitable market failures, and instead pushed a faith that markets were near-infallible and that public institutions were the hazard.⁹ He also believes that a 'revolving door' between the financial community and the IMF saw the blurring of interests between the two.¹⁰ He argues that at that time, albeit unofficially and probably unintentionally, the IMF began to work like a debt collector for G-7 lenders. Their policies became focused on debt repayment rather than other options such as stalling repayments or bankruptcy options – options that were better off in the long run for the developing countries and for global stability, but would mean that creditors remained unpaid. “Looking at the IMF policies in this way, its emphasis on getting foreign creditors repaid rather than helping domestic businesses remain open becomes more understandable.”¹¹

I believe that in these two criticisms lie the crux of why Jamaica's weak development performance was entrenched and exacerbated through its dealings with the IMF. I will look at situations in Jamaica generated by IMF requirements and policies, how they demonstrate these two criticisms of the IMF, and how they have been detrimental to Jamaica's development.

An important criticism of the IMF's policy implementation requirements is that they push for too much liberalisation too soon. Liberalisation before adequate regulations and monitoring systems are put in place, before social adjustments or retraining can occur, before new practices can be learnt, can lead to disastrous consequences for developing countries.¹² Trade liberalisation in Jamaica is a good example of this. In the period following its independence, Jamaica diversified and industrialised its manufacturing sector, however the majority of its markets – with the notable exceptions of minerals, bananas and an emerging tourism sector – remained domestic. Agriculture for the domestic market still played a large role in the economy. Its main export products were few, and dependent on a limited number of markets, namely the United Kingdom and the US, and the banana industry received preferential treatment from Jamaica's old colonial masters the United Kingdom.¹³ Tariffs and restrictions on the importation of some goods provided subsidies for important agricultural imports that the local sector couldn't provide.¹⁴ By the early 1990s, most of these protectionist measures had been removed as a requirement to receive IMF assistance.¹⁵ In some instances, this was a good thing. The importation of cheap second-hand cars from Japan allowed a new taxi industry to flourish.¹⁶ However in many instances the Jamaican market was flooded with cheap, often second-rate, products that the local market could simply not compete with. The agricultural sector was hit particularly hard. For example, local businesses selling high-grade chicken to the local market were put out of business after cheap 'dark meat' parts of chicken flooded the market from the US.¹⁷ The dairy industry was also hit hard, with farmers having to dump fresh milk into the gutters because milk powder from overseas was inundating the market at a lower cost.¹⁸ Ironically the US and other industrialised countries such as members of the EU maintain tariffs and restrictions on foreign imports, and subsidies such as in the agricultural sector, which leads to issues such as overproduction and the subsequent market flooding of developing countries.¹⁹ The developing countries, reliant on assistance from the IMF, must adopt liberalisation or perish – but trade liberalisation is only beneficial if you have a well developed export sector, and Jamaica did not. It is likely that even if it did, it would still have encountered barriers when exporting to countries such as the US. Although a greater variety of goods were available, and at a cheaper price, to the Jamaican people this was offset by the collapse of local industries and businesses, and subsequent unemployment.²⁰ The collapse of the agricultural industry saw rapid urbanisation as people came to the cities in search of work.²¹ Although non-traditional crops such as coffee and condiments showed promise for the export market, this required long-term investment, education and nurturing that often wasn't available.²² However, the 'market fundamentalism' predominant at the IMF did not see these effects as consequences of trade liberalisation – instead of admitting error, the IMF, in Jamaica and other developing countries, only pushed these policies further.²³

One sector in which Jamaica did develop comparative advantage was the apparel manufacturing sector. In an effort to induce foreign direct investment into the country, and at the behest of the IMF, Jamaica liberalised its financial sector. This allowed it to establish 'free trade zones' – zones in which usual import/export taxation, labour and union laws do not apply – and open them up for foreign business interests. This was mostly in the form of CMT (cut make trim) firms where workers assemble garments from imported pre-cut fabrics. In accordance with IMF guidelines, wages are kept low to help maintain 'comparative advantage'. Jamaica's proximity to the US, which was the market, also gave Jamaica advantage.²⁴ However, 'free trade zones' encouraged by the IMF are autonomous zones, with little connection to the local economy, except for providing cheap land and low-paid labour. For example the CMT zones imported all the fabric, pre-cut, directly into the autonomous zones. The only value added to the garments in Jamaica was that of labour when the garments were assembled. Low-skill labour, as was used in the CMT firms, is not something that needs investment, there is no need for education or training. There few reasons for such companies to stay in one place in the long term, let alone invest in that area. Surely enough, in the mid-1990s, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed and low wage competition in Central America emerged that Jamaica couldn't compete with. The CMT firms packed up and left en masse – between 1996 and 2000, 47 companies closed or relocated their operations leaving their workers with nothing.²⁵ This provides another example of how IMF policy pushes for risky short-term solutions to enable developing countries to cover debt repayments at the expense of less lucrative long-term investment that will provide stability and growth of communities and economies.

Granted that the world has changed a lot since the Bretton-Woods Institutions were first formed in 1944, I do not believe that the spirit behind the IMF – to assist countries regain long-term stability in times of fiscal hardship – should have. However the dominance of the neo-liberal free market ideology and the 'revolving door' between the private financial sector and the public institution of the IMF has seen the IMF lose sight of this. It is able to push its fundamentalist free market ideologies onto developing countries that are in no position to say no. In Jamaica this devastated the local agricultural sector, flooded Jamaica with second-rate goods, and left already-struggling people unemployed and with no immediate job prospects. The IMF's tendency to push for debt repayment over long-term stability has seen projects such as the 'free trade zones' set up in Jamaica. They only encourage and entrench weak development performance as they provide no opportunities for workers to upskill, the wages are very low, there is no investment in the wider community, and there is no incentive for long-term investment. Indeed, in Jamaica the firms left as quickly as they arrived once cheaper labour became available elsewhere. Although Jamaica was in a bad economic situation of its own doing already, I believe that Jamaica's weak development performance since the 1970s was exacerbated and entrenched by its involvement with the IMF.

1Witter, M 'Trade liberalization: The Jamaican Experience' (Unpublished, 2005), p186

2Witter, M 'Trade liberalization: The Jamaican Experience', p191

3Broad, R and J Cavanagh, Development Redefined: How the Market Met Its Match (Colorado, USA: Paradigm Publishers, 2009), pxii; Witter, M 'Trade liberalization: The Jamaican Experience', p191

4Witter, M 'Trade liberalization: The Jamaican Experience', p191

5Witter, M 'Trade liberalization: The Jamaican Experience', p191

6International Monetary Fund, 'About the IMF: History: Cooperation and reconstruction (1944–71)', http://www.imf.org/external/about/histcoop.htm (accessed 9/4/2011)

7Stiglitz, Joseph E, Globalization and its Discontents (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2002), p196

8Broad, R and J Cavanagh, Development Redefined: How the Market Met Its Match, pxii; Stiglitz, Joseph E, Globalization and its Discontent, p13

9Stiglitz, Joseph E, Globalization and its Discontents, p196

10Ibid, p207

11Ibid, p208

12Fukuyama, Francis, 'The Imperative of State Building', Journal of Democracy 15/2, p20; Kirkpatrick, C and D Tennant, 'Responding to Financial Crisis: Better Off Without the IMF? The Case of Jamaica' in Finance and Development Research Programme Working Paper Series (University of Manchester: Institute for Development Policy and Management, 2002) Paper #38, p7; Stiglitz, Joseph E, Globalization and its Discontents, p212

13Witter, M 'Trade liberalization: The Jamaican Experience', p186, 188

14Ibid, p193

15Ibid, pp192-195

16Ibid, p199

17Black, Stephanie, Life and Debt: A Film (Tough Gong Pictures, 2001)

18Ibid

19Ibid

20Witter, M 'Trade liberalization: The Jamaican Experience', p206

21Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, 'Jamaica – Economy', http://www.countrystudies.us/caribbean-islands/24.htm (accessed 10/4/2011)

22Witter, M 'Trade liberalization: The Jamaican Experience', p203

23Stiglitz, Joseph E, Globalization and its Discontents, p213

24Witter, M 'Trade liberalization: The Jamaican Experience', p195

25Witter, M 'Trade liberalization: The Jamaican Experience', pp195-196; Black, Stephanie, Life and Debt: A Film

sick

sick of the bullshit, the boasting, the half-truths and the politics.  sick of the drama.  sick of the people and sick of their egos.  sick of the guilt-trips and the side-taking.

love the hard work.  the hard word.  the end goal.  love the solitude, love the teamwork.  love the places where humans are not, love my whanau who make me laugh. love getting my hands dirty.  love being a small cog in a huge wonderful machine.  love stepping back and seeing the big picture.  love my friends who make me take that step.

just don't fuck with me cos i'm pretty much out of veneer to make your shit shiny. 

Young people these days..

Okay so this is not so much an informative post as a forehead-slapping, head-shaking, 'Oh-God-Why' expression of thoughts I find myself thinking on a daily basis.

As you may have picked up, I've returned to university this year after a long absence.  An absence that makes me a good decade or more older than most people in my classes.  I've never felt old before, but damn am I noticing some interesting - and really annoying - differences between "young people these days" and behaviour from back "when I was your age".

Sure, I didn't walk to university in the snow with no shoes, warming my feet in fresh cow-pats.  But when I was a fresh little out-of-high-school first-year, lecturers actually lectured - the best ones inspired and instilled passion, and seemed like intellectual demigods to be respected and aspired-to.  Alright, so perhaps I exaggerate slightly, but learning took on new dimensions for me, they were staggering, and it felt as if our lecturers were conduits to endless knowledge. It was an exciting time.

Now I am back.  Things have changed. And I don't like it.

In many of my lectures, instead of even pretending to pay attention to the lecturer, students are on their laptops Facebooking, watching  clips on YouTube, or even just talking to their friends out loud.  In the now overcrowded library, large groups of students congregate, eating hot chips or pies (OH WOW that would have been sacrilege when I was younger!), all talking at once about "OH. EM. GEE. Did you SEE what she was wearing?" "Yeah, like, what a slut!" etc etc ad nauseum.  And this is in the QUIET areas of the library!  How did this come to be?  Talking in a library was once unthinkable - and not just because of prowling librarians who would rip your head off for even sneezing!

I think the thing that shocked me the most this week was listening to some students in their early 20s - definitely not first years - making fun of our lecturer and his course before he came into the room.  Our lecturer, who has spent many years working and researching in an industry these young men want to enter, and who has years of life experience on these young (insert expletive here).  One of these young men subsequently sat on his (very expensive) cellphone for the entire class texting, checking his watch and sighing loudly every couple of minutes or so.  I considered asking him if his face would like to meet my fist.  An impossible fantasy that played out fantastically inside my head.

Interestingly enough, the same lecturer was telling us about, because of new funding allocation systems based around research outputs, emphasis on teaching - both time spent on preparing, and ability in - at the university has taken a back seat.  So much so that one lecturer, who has an exceedingly good reputation and whose classes are always full, has now lost her position as over the last few years she has focused on teaching her students rather than in personal research!

This change in focus is obvious after an absence.  It feels as if a lot of the passion and skill at public speaking has gone.  Many lectures are based on PowerPoint presentations which are sometimes read virtually ad verbatim, and then posted online.  Attending physical lectures is virtually unnecessary.  Tutorial classes are also getting bigger.  In both of my papers this semester the tutorials have so many people in them there are not enough chairs in the room to seat everyone.

Although there are notable exceptions - there really are some fantastic lecturers out there, and bright inspiring first-year students too - things have changed for the worse.  I don't think it's because I'm getting old and boring.  Well, maybe a little..  But considering the rising costs of university fees I sure would like to think I'm purchasing a learning environment and great teaching expertise - not just free WiFi and a running commentary of what some slappers did on the weekend.

Rules for Radicals

Saul Alinsky (1909-1972) spearheaded grassroots community organising in Chicago, aimed at giving poor neighbourhoods the tools to work together in improving their lives.  Alinsky is seen by some as the founder of modern community activism and organising.  He changed the way a lot of people think about democracy.  

In 1971 he published a book Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals - Alinsky says of it "The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away."  A friend of mine passed on a condensed version of the twelve rules, which I'm now sharing with you.  Wise words that help make sense of a challenging world..

RULES FOR RADICALS
by Saul Alinsky

RULE 1: "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have." Power is derived from 2 main sources - money and people. "Have-Nots" must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)

RULE 2: "Never go outside the expertise of your people." It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. (Organizations under attack wonder why radicals don't address the "real" issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.)

RULE 3: "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy." Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

RULE 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

RULE 6: "A good tactic is one your people enjoy." They'll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They're doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid "un-fun" activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)

RULE 7: "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag." Don't become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)

RULE 8: "Keep the pressure on. Never let up." Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

RULE 9: "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself." Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists' minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)

RULE 10: "If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive." Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management's wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)

RULE 11: "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative." Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)

RULE 12: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.) 

If you're keen to read more of Alinsky's writing, this site is a good starter..

Water water everywhere..

We are a lucky bunch of folk here in Aotearoa.  Of course, things aren't perfect but there are a lot of things we take for granted.  That if we get hurt, we can go to Accident and Emergency and recieve treatment.  That when we go to the supermarket the foods we eat from week to week will be on the shelves, and at pretty much the same price as when we last bought them. 

That - large earthquakes notwithstanding - when we turn on the tap fresh drinkable water will come out.

But we can't afford to be complacent.  Drinkable water may very well be the new crude oil.  From the storylines of comic books such as Tank Girl, a global hegemony and world wars based on control of fresh water is now being talked at in academic circles.

Control of water, especially for agriculture, is increasingly falling into the hands of large corporate entities at the expense of the local people.  And despite their claims of working to develop more efficient water use for the betterment of humankind, it makes sense that if a company's prerogative is to turn a profit then it is going to want to sell more of its product, not less.

The connections aren't always direct, the capitalist idealogues are well practised in painting a shiny veneer on bullshit and blurring the lines between 'need' and 'want'.  The invisible hand of the market belongs to the croupier of Big Business, and the house always wins.

Take, for example, the Ica Valley in Peru - a desert area in the Andes and one of the driest places on earth.  In the late 1990s the World Bank loaned millions of dollars to create asparagus beds in the Valley - expanding to cover almost 100sq km in just 10 years. Peru is now the largest exporter of asparagus in the world, with 95% grown on reclaimed desert in the Ica Valley.  The industry has created 10,000 new jobs in this poor area.

Sounds good right?  New jobs using land that was otherwise not being used?  But here's the thing.  The asparagus beds require constant irrigation.  And in 2002 - that's eight years ago - the region started using more water than was being replenished by rain and the suchlike and the watertable began to drop.  Drastically.  Up to two metres a year.  Two wells in the area, supplying life-giving water to up to 18,500 people, have already dried up.  But that's not all.  Water rights in the area are now owned by the large producers.  Small and medium scale farmers have to pay out for irrigation water from the main canals.  As the land gets dryer, the less productive it becomes and the less water retention it has.  When smaller-scale farmers fail through lack of access to water, for irrigation and for living, the large producers buy up their land for cheap.

Here's what really gets me.  The market for fresh asparagus barely existed before the late 1990s.  It's a created market, sold as a luxury item to overseas markets like the UK. Yet it is killing the land, livelihoods - and lives - of real people across the other side of the world.  The supermarket chains and investors won't be sticking around to help them when the water runs out.  And it will.

This is by no means an isolated case.  Type 'water privatisation' into any search engine and a myriad of similar cases around the world will come up.  It's a huge issue in many developing countries right now as pushing for water privatisation is high on the list of the World Bank, IMF and cronies.

And it's here in Aotearoa.

A subsidiary of Veolia, the biggest water company in the world, is already has seven contracts in a PPP (Public-Private Partnership) to provide water services in Aotearoa.  These contracts could last up to 35 years.

To put some perspective on things, in just 20 years our close neighbour Sydney could be facing a very serious water shortage.  Further afield water is already running out.  Aotearoa, with its low population-density, reliance on foreign trade, and virtually non-existent militarisation - but abundance of clean water and arable land - is going to start looking pretty damned attractive to a lot of powerful people.  People who don't play nice with the kids already in the playground.  People who will screw this country for all they can get and then walk away. 

If we let them.

Veolia already has a toehold, but nothing that can't be dislodged.  And not all threats are foreign.  Federated Farmers want to abstain from responsibility when it comes to livestock effluent in our waterways - but they too can be held accountable if we work together.

Aotearoa is a beautiful country.  But it's time to stop being complacent, to appreciate what we have, and to look after and protect it!

[Inspiration and information in this post comes from The Guardian online ]

Scissors beat paper

Thanks to Bernard for putting me onto this jem..

What passes for 'normal' these days?

This week I've been doing a lot of reading on Feminist International Relations theory.  Having been away from the feminist fold for some years - from an academic standpoint at least - it's nice to get back into the mindset of reevaluating the 'dominant theories' we learn in class and remember that the alarming majority of it has been constructed by white males.  And by nice, I really mean fascinating, but in a sort of 'oh look it's a car crash and I can't stop staring' kind of way.

The only readings I have had this year that have been written unabashedly from a woman's or a non-Western point-of-view have been given to us as 'interest' or 'fringe' readings - eg 'feminist' or 'Asian perspective'.  The other 98 percent or so of readings don't carry the label 'Western', or 'male'.  To be these things is to be 'normal'.   

And when you do the math, this is a really disturbing state of affairs.  Women make up a good half of the population across the board.  Across all ethnicities, classes, religions.  And the number of people in the world who do not consider themselves to be 'Western' far outweighs those that do.  So why are all these people's experiences and combined knowledge considered to be 'the other'? 

I'm not saying that this state of affairs is anyone's choice.  I don't believe it's some conspiracy-theory on behalf of the University, or the lecturers that construct the courses.  I believe tradition has a lot to blame.  A tradition where it was the males in the Western world who were literate, who had time to philosophise, who had the contacts in the public sphere to discuss their intellectual musings and even be published.  Of course, their audience - initially at least - was no doubt white and male also, and so on, a snowballing effect in which what passes now for 'absolute truth', for 'knowledge', can be traced back to a very small gene-pool of world experience which totally ignores the experiences of the rest of the (very diverse) population. 

And it feels at times as if this overwhelming history of white male knowledge, taught as 'objective truth', has left very little room for those of us that aren't white males to figure out our own truths.  For example, a lot of feminist theory I have read is either based on, or is reaction to, existing white-male theory.  For example, Marxist Feminism, or Liberal Feminism.  Or Psychoanalytical Feminism which has a lot of Freud-based theories. 

I don't pretend to have an 'answer' to all this.  Or even suppose that there might be one.  Many of the vary varied theories, covering all sorts of topics, I have studied over the years have made a lot of sense to me.  I'm not saying they should be discarded in favour of reinventing the wheel.  But it would be nice to know what else is out there.  Especially coming from a white, reasonably economically comfortable, literate background - what important knowledge out there in the rest of the world am I missing because it's being drowned out by a dominance in history of white male voices?

an invitation of sorts..

Feeling the intense need to cram my head full of information. Like my brain is parched, and books hold liquid information I want to swim in, hold my breath and dive under till I'm exhausted and saturated and have to come up for air..

Accompanying this desire to fill myself to bursting point with new ideas is the need to subsequently inflict my new findings and opinions on any poor soul within earshot (or now, anyone hapless enough to stumble upon this blog..).

I am currently a student of Public Policy, and International Relations - and in the name of disclosure I also come from an influential background of feminist and anarchist thinking.  I love the idea of 'The System' as a puzzle, a pattern, a machine formed of (at times) a myriad of seemingly unrelated parts that when put together form the miracle that is the society that we live our lives by, and within, from birth till burial.  I love watching over my City from the window of my bus and contemplating how amazing it is that this bustle of buildings and people come together and ensure that the streets are cleared of rubbish every night, that when I turn on a tap, fresh drinkable water comes out.  That the clothing people around me are wearing is determined not by purpose or availability of local product but by some.. understanding..? dictate..? from half a world away.. Opinions on what this all means abound in my head, but lately I have been more drawn to the fascination of the mechanisms, both material and social, that bring the whole shebang together. Ways we take for granted every minute of the day.

As my big fix, the monkey on my back, at the moment is knowledge, and I believe that knowledge consists of the accumulated experience of many different people, I really hope that if you want to comment on, add to, or veer off on some crazy tangent from what I've written then you will do so.